


Letters

by HighKingMargo



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drugs, F/F, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighKingMargo/pseuds/HighKingMargo
Summary: For Whitespire's Armory's third theme: Kady writes letters to Julia, who she assumes is dead, after she runs from Reynard.





	Letters

When the police came to Kady’s house to take her dad away, she ran to her room. When her mom came to her and said “Chickadee, baby, I messed up, people are dead, the hedge witches want you,” she ran to Brakebills. When Reynard took the Freetraders’ hearts and turned to Julia, she ran, and she ran, and she ran.

And she hid. She warded the flophouse down in Midtown and crouched in a corner and reinforced her mental wards and shrouded as much of herself as she could. To most magicians, for a time, she didn’t exist. Every second she sat in that corner, invisible to everyone but her own guilt, she tried to wrench herself out of her terror and find help.

Julia was back there with that monster.

Julia was dying if she wasn’t dead already.

But Kady didn’t move. She cried and she dragged her nails down the skin of her arms so hard she bled. All her life, she’d put on the mask of a warrior to cover the scared little girl beneath it. She’d always been a runner, but she never should have run from the one person she had left.

When morning came, after the night passed in a haze, Kady checked her phone. No texts. No calls. She ran through her contacts and hovered over Julia’s name, finger poised, desperate to know whether she was alive and terrified of evidence that she wasn’t.

The phone rang until it hit voicemail. Kady threw it into the wall, then collected it with its cracked screen and called again. She called three more times before crying into the receiver after the beep: “Jules, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please call me back if you’re okay.”

But the day passed and Julia didn’t call back. So did the next day, and the next week, and by the end of week two Kady had traded her phone for drugs.

She didn’t know what made her start writing the letters. She’d never sent any to her dad, or to her mom, or to Penny, or to anybody else she’d left behind, but she found a pen and a torn, wrinkled piece of paper and started writing, tears falling onto the words and smudging them.

_Julia,_

_I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know what else to say except that I wish I would have done something. Anything. I’m a coward and you suffered for it and I’m so, so sorry._

_The world isn’t okay without you in it._

Kady wiped her eyes, crumpled the paper, and shoved it deep into her pocket. What was she doing? Julia would never read this, and “sorry” wasn’t going to bring her back.

But the next time she found something to write on, she found herself doing it again.

_Julia,_

_I miss you. I don’t know what you believed in, especially after what happened, but whatever it is I hope it’s nice. If anyone deserves peace, it’s you._

_I’m not doing so good. It’s been a month now and I’m still sick to my stomach all the time. I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t think I’ve cried this much in my whole life. Everything feels pointless._

_You know, I don’t know what I believe about where you are now either, but I’ve thought about joining you. The thing is, I’m still a coward. I’m still running. Afraid of what comes next. I haven’t led a life deserving of a good death, Jules, and even if I had…I’m afraid of how to face you if we meet again._

_I guess I’ll keep surviving until I don’t have a choice._

Kady stared at the letter, glassy eyed, before stuffing it into her pocket with the first one. It was pathetic, all of it. The letters. The wallowing. The fact that she hadn’t even changed her clothes since she’d run. At one point in her life she’d promised herself she’d never let things get this bad, but she couldn’t bring herself to care anymore.

The next time she wrote was after a dream. She’d had so many nightmares she became accustomed to them. What she couldn’t handle was waking from one simple, normal dream in which Julia was alive and well and lying peacefully in bed next to her. The rigid flophouse floor had never felt so cold and desolate.

_Julia,_

_Do you remember the first night you invited me to sleep in your room instead of on the couch? We were up until like three in the morning talking about all the wrong we’d done and how we were going to make it right. I just had a dream about that night._

_I’m fucking losing it. I know it didn’t really happen, but in the dream you faced me and held my hand and got close enough that I could see all those golden flecks in your eyes. Then I woke up and you were gone again. I can’t stand it. It hurts. I just want to be able to hold your hand and forget about all of this._

_Fuck it all. I wouldn’t even admit to myself how I felt about you because it would have made me feel weak. What a joke, right? Look at me. I’ve never felt weaker than I do now without you. I loved you, Jules. I still love you. I wish I had the chance to tell you how important you were._

“You her? The miracle girl?”

Kady looked up at the man standing over her. He was young and dirty loose-fitting clothes, same as almost everyone else in the place, but she didn’t think she’d seen him before. He must have sought her out from elsewhere.

She heaved herself to her feet and tried her best to look like she hadn’t just been crying. “That’s me,” she said. “What do you need?”

The man rubbed his nose and looked away. “I don’t know if I have enough to pay for a life,” he said, “but…can you bring people back? From the dead, I mean.”

Kady snorted. How ironic. “If I could, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Yeah, I thought it was a stupid thing to ask.” He sighed. “What about my leg, then?”

She hadn’t noticed before, but he leaned to one side as he stood, his leg twisted out to a slightly unnatural angle. She may not be a true healer, but she’d been hurt enough times to learn how to take the pain away. She told him this, did a spell on his leg, and took the methadone he offered. She had it in her by the time he walked out the door.

When Kady opened her eyes and saw Julia’s face, she thought she must be hallucinating, or maybe even dead. It would track for an opioid overdose to end by mocking her like this.

But the vision didn’t fade. It touched her, and it pulled her to her feet, and it carried her out of the flophouse to Julia’s apartment where it dawned on her that this was real.

Julia helped her onto the couch and busied herself pouring a glass of water, then sat on the edge next to Kady and held it to her lips.

Kady wanted to push it away and talk, but she was parched, so she drank. When she finished, Julia set the glass on the side table and brushed Kady’s hair out of her clammy face and frowned down at her.

“What did you get into?” she murmured.

“Who gives a shit,” Kady murmured. “You’re here. Right? This is you?”

Julia nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been here. Where have you been?”

Kady shook her head as tears welled up in her eyes. That night had played over and over again in her head since it happened: her friends lying dead on the floor, Julia standing in front of her and demanding that monster of a god not to touch her. She’d had the image of Julia with her throat slit, her blood coating the hardwood, burned into her imagination for weeks.

She couldn’t help the sob that escaped her chest as she pulled Julia down and hugged her as tightly as she could. Julia tensed for a moment, then gave way to her touch and cradled her head in her arms as she cried.

“I thought you were gone,” Kady said. “I thought you were dead.” She pulled back and looked Julia in the eyes. Part of her still thought this could be a trick of the drugs, but it felt so real. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”

Julia furrowed her brow. “What?” she said. “When did you call me?”

Kady stared at her. “The day after…you know,” she said. “Five times? Then every day for, like, two weeks. Did you not get any of those calls?”

“Shit.” Julia closed her eyes and covered her face with her hand. “Marina trashed my phone that night and gave me a new one, just with my family’s numbers. That’s my fault; I told her to patch over those memories and make sure I wouldn’t remember what happened.”

“Marina _helped_ you?” Kady hesitated. “What happened after I left?”

Julia looked down and twisted her fingers together. “I don’t want to talk about that yet,” she said. “Um…you know where the shower is if you want to use it. You left some of your clothes in my dresser. And I’ll make you something to eat.”

“Okay,” Kady said. All she really wanted to do was sit there next to Julia and talk, or not talk, and just be happy that she was alive, but she could tell she’d struck a nerve and she smelled terrible anyway. She took one more long look at Julia before getting in the shower.

It felt good. She’d almost forgotten how nice it is to feel clean, so she took her time in the shower, letting the hot water run down her skin. She found her toothbrush in the bathroom, too, and spent five minutes scrubbing her teeth. She felt more awake now, more like a person. Like she’d finally come out of a long nightmare.

Julia was sitting on the couch in front of a stack of wrinkled papers when Kady came out of the shower, and it took her a few moments to realize what they were. Julia looked up when the door closed behind her and tentatively shifted the papers in her lap.

“I, uh…I was going to wash your clothes for you,” she said. “I felt these in your pocket so I took them out and then I saw my name, so…”

“Jules…”

How was she supposed to justify this? Julia was never supposed to be able to read those letters; they were for herself, as pathetic as that was.

“Are you okay?”

Kady blinked. “I mean, that’s kind of a loaded question. You did just pull me out of a flophouse.”

Julia looked down at the letters. “You pretty much just said here that you wanted to die. I don’t know when you wrote these but…just tell me you won’t.”

She looked up and Kady could see now that her eyes were red and puffy. Had she been crying? A pang of discomfort settled in her chest. “I was pretty high when I wrote that,” she murmured. It wasn’t a lie.

“Kady.”

“I won’t,” Kady said. “I promise, okay? I was alone then, but now I’m not.” She sat down beside Julia. “Forget about me. What about you? How have you been doing after…?”

Julia snorted and leaned back to stare up at the ceiling. “About the same.”

“This is so fucked.”

“Tell me about it.”

They sat silently for a few moments, neither of them looking at one another, until Julia said, “Did you really mean that stuff you said about me? In the letter about the dream?”

Kady paused, but there was no use in denying it. What was it she’d said? _I wish I had the chance to tell you how important you were_? Well, now was her chance.

“Of course I did,” she said. “I can’t even remember the last time somebody made me feel…I don’t know. Hopeful? Happy? You’re someone I actually wanted to be open with for once in my life.” She laughed dryly. “I mean, I sucked at it, but I wanted to.”

Julia hummed and reached out to take Kady’s hand. She ran her thumb over her knuckles and pulled herself closer. “Can we just…”

“Yeah,” Kady breathed, allowing Julia to curl up against her side and rest her head on her shoulder. She almost thought she might cry again, but she managed to keep it at bay as she held Julia and breathed with her in steady silence. Maybe things would be okay, she thought. As long as they had each other.


End file.
